New Earth

Начало книги

Chiang Chantao sat in his powerchair, floating high above the flooded city of St. Louis.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” he said, his voice barely more than a pained croak.

“But it is,” said Felicia Ionescu, seemingly standing in midair beside him.

What had once been a thriving city was now a drowned disaster, buildings inundated, highways submerged, even the magnificent Gateway Arch’s foundations awash in several meters of muddy water. Long lines of miserable refugees were plodding away from the city, automobiles, trucks, buses inching along, bumper to bumper, piled high with mattresses, bicycles, clothes washers, sticks of furniture; others were on foot, sloshing stolidly through the rain, the water knee-deep in some places, carrying babies and bundles of whatever they could salvage from their ruined homes.

“Kill the display,” Chiang commanded.

The virtual reality simulation disappeared. Chiang was sitting in his powerchair in the middle of the VR chamber, a wizened, bald, crippled old man connected to the blinking, softly beeping heart pump and artificial lungs and other machinery that kept his emaciated body alive.

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